In the Silence, something rises

Few things are more irritating to me than conceited people. I have a particular dislike for those who seem to believe their silence, or absence, actually matters to anybody but their nearest and dearest.

The bitter truth is that most people neither know, nor care, nor notice if you vanish. If, like me, you have a few people who love you and hold you in esteem, you are fortunate indeed.

Perhaps you know the sort of person I mean. Those who leave twitter with a fanfare are in that crew. As one reply had it “It’s not a departure lounge, you don’t have to announce anything, just go”. Or when a Fakebook socialite baits her attention hook by writing “If only people weren’t so cruel!” and awaits the dopamine hit.

Or when writers go radio silent and then write enigmatic posts not quite alluding to whatever is going on with them.

Oops. Sorry.

Better unmarked silence than histrionic social media attention whore who fakes tortured soul for attention, I tend to believe.

But as the gap has stretched, I have had a few emails from concerned online friends, which I appreciate very much. And it seems a little impolite to not at least say hello. I am alive. I will be back with something better than this.

It is a reciprocal arrangement, after all. I beat my brains bloody on the keyboard, and you examine the remains, as one examines a goat’s entrails for hints of the future.

If a writer bleeds to death in the woods, and nobody is around to appreciate the rivulets of blood first gushing, then clotting, then finally ebbing to a stuttering stop, are they even a writer?

My brain does not want me to write, or do very much at all at the moment. It’s not writer’s block, it’s everything block. I am hanging on to the basics of a functional life, and should you meet me, on my extremely rare forages into the outer world, I will appear mostly as I normally do.

But there is a lot going on in on the inside, underneath the silences.

Isn’t there always, for all of us?

Sharp

The things that happen when you are young do not make you tough. Or at least, they did not make me tough. They made me hard and sharp, like a sheet of glass. When pushed too hard, the edifice shatters.

I certainly hold no grudges for decades old happenings, and only very rarely think upon them.

But your formative years are - well - formative. When you are raised in a wolves den surrounded by poisonous snakes, your reaction to slings and arrows will never be quite that of Susan the yoga instructor.

I eventually realised that no matter what anybody claims, demands or dreams, if you are unmade as a child you cannot, ever, be fashioned from a similar clay to those who were not. There’s nothing useful or helpful to be gleaned from that, it just is.

The units that make me whole are more like Jenga than proper building blocks. I have husband, children, work, my home, friends, health routines and other routines to anchor me.

If an outside source removes or alters one of those units, or reworks anything in my life sufficiently, the other Jenga blocks hover uncertainly as I try like Samson to support the structure.

But when the pressure becomes too intense, and I splinter into thousands of shards, it would be a mistake to forget that I can still aim as I shatter, slicing your throat and piercing your organs.

I will always find one last burst of strength to take you with me as I fall.

I’ve always been a big believer in justice and balancing the scales. Forgiveness is for fools, weaklings and cowards.

Anyway. My beautiful, kind children visited me over the last few weeks and my son - a young man to make any mother’s heart proud - stayed for a week, which was grounding.

A mother’s love is so abiding, so deep in blood and bones, that I can fake being a mum even when I am mostly a simulacrum.

And if you slip into the role often enough, the fakery becomes a shallow sort of reality. and for a time all I am is a middle aged wife and mum who has a part time job in community services, as the creative soul of me trudges back to the basement and shuts the door.

But my dreams are not quiet.

Do you ever dream about things you cannot describe because the words don’t exist to describe them? The language does not even exist to sketch out the concepts.

Long ago, I made a video about mental illness, and how I cannot find the words for concepts which actually don’t exist in language.

I’m not in that place now, to be clear. It’s a different realm I’m currently visiting. The various iterations of me are currently trudging through glue in a landscape of the utterly bland.

Mick comes back tomorrow. He is my rock, my special person, the one who always fights in my corner whether I am right or wrong - and vice versa. And with him back in my bed, and one more block back in place, I know I will start to lift from the fog again.

Meanwhile, if I can find the energy, I might edit some old work so at least I am posting something.

So much mental health/physical health advice is hackneyed to the point of fruitless mundanity - but one thing does hold true for me.

Just do something. Move. One foot, one leg, move forward. Do SOMETHING, and slowly, with a grating, crunching wail, the rest will surely follow.

So here I am, doing something.

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